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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 973 records · Page 54
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2023

Quantum paramagnetism in a non-Kramers rare-earth oxide: Monoclinic Pr 2 Ti 2 O 7

Little is so far known about the magnetism of the A 2 B 2 O 7 monoclinic layered perovskites that replace the spin-ice supporting pyrochlore structure for r A /r B > 1.78. We show that high quality monoclinic Pr 2 Ti 2 O 7 single crystals with a three-dimensional network of non-Kramers Pr 3+ ions that interact through edge-sharing superexchange interactions, form a singlet ground-state quantum paramagnet that does not undergo any magnetic phase transitions down to, at least, 1.8 K. The chemical phase stability, structure, and magnetic properties of the layered perovskite Pr 2 Ti 2 O 7 were investigated using x-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, and magnetization measurements. Synthesis of polycrystalline samples with the nominal compositions of Pr 2 Ti 2+x O 7 (–0.16 ≤ x ≤ 0.16 ) showed that deviations from the Pr 2 Ti 2 O 7 stoichiometry lead to secondary phases of related structures including the perovskite phase Pr 2/3 TiO 3 and the orthorhombic phases Pr 4 Ti 9 O 24 and Pr 2 TiO 5 . No indications of site disordering (stuffing and antistuffing) or vacancy defects were observed in the Pr 2 Ti 2 O 7 majority phase. A procedure for growth of high-structural-quality stoichiometric single crystals of Pr 2 Ti 2 O 7 by the traveling solvent floating zone method is reported. Thermomagnetic measurements of single-crystalline Pr 2 Ti 2 O 7 reveal an isolated singlet ground state that we associate with the low-symmetry crystal electric-field environments that split the (2J + 1 = 9)-fold degenerate spin-orbital multiplets of the four differently coordinated Pr 3+ ions into 36 isolated singlets resulting in an anisotropic temperature-independent van Vleck susceptibility at low T. Here, a small isotropic Curie term is associated with 0.96(2)% noninteracting Pr 4+ impurities.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2018

Renewable hydrogen production via thermochemical/electrochemical coupling

A coupled electrochemical/thermochemical cycle was investigated to produce hydrogen from renewable resources. Like a conventional thermochemical cycle, this cycle leverages chemical energy stored in a thermochemical working material that is reduced thermally by solar energy. However, in this concept, the stored chemical energy only needs to be partially capable of splitting steam to produce hydrogen. To push the reaction to completion, a proton-conducting membrane is employed to separate hydrogen as it is produced, thus shifting the thermodynamics toward further hydrogen production. This novel coupled-cycle concept provides several benefits. First, the required oxidation enthalpy of the reversible thermochemical material is reduced, enabling the process to occur at lower temperatures. Second, removing the requirement for spontaneous steam splitting widens the scope of materials compositions, allowing for less expensive/more abundant elements to be used. Lastly, thermodynamics calculations suggest that this concept can potentially reach higher efficiencies than photovoltaic-to-electrolysis hydrogen production methods. This Exploratory Express LDRD involved assessing the practical feasibility of the proposed coupled cycle. A test stand was designed and constructed and proton-conducting membranes were synthesized. An LDRD plus-up of $10k enabled the remediation of a membrane sealing issue and enabled testing with an improved membrane. However, the membrane proved too thick for efficient proton conduction, and there were insufficient funds to continue. While the full proof of concept was not achieved, the individual components of the experiment were validated and new capabilities that can be leveraged by a variety of programs were developed.

08 HYDROGEN↗
NASA NTRS1991

A novel gas-droplet numerical method for spray combustion

This paper presents a non-iterative numerical technique for computing time-dependent gas-droplet flows. The method is a fully-interacting combination of Eulerian fluid and Lagrangian particle calculation. The interaction calculations between the two phases are formulated on a pressure-velocity coupling procedure based on the operator-splitting technique. This procedure eliminates the global iterations required in the conventional particle-source-in-cell (PSIC) procedure. Turbulent dispersion calculations are treated by a stochastic procedure. Numerical calculations and comparisons with available experimental data, as well as efficiency assessments are given for some sprays typical of spray combustion applications.

Chen, C. P.↗
NASA NTRS2006

Efficient Agent-Based Models for Non-Genomic Evolution

Modeling dynamical systems composed of aggregations of primitive proteins is critical to the field of astrobiological science involving early evolutionary structures and the origins of life. Unfortunately traditional non-multi-agent methods either require oversimplified models or are slow to converge to adequate solutions. This paper shows how to address these deficiencies by modeling the protein aggregations through a utility based multi-agent system. In this method each agent controls the properties of a set of proteins assigned to that agent. Some of these properties determine the dynamics of the system, such as the ability for some proteins to join or split other proteins, while additional properties determine the aggregation s fitness as a viable primitive cell. We show that over a wide range of starting conditions, there are mechanisins that allow protein aggregations to achieve high values of overall fitness. In addition through the use of agent-specific utilities that remain aligned with the overall global utility, we are able to reach these conclusions with 50 times fewer learning steps.

Gupta, Nachi↗
NASA NTRS2009

Developing a Standard Method for Link-Layer Security of CCSDS Space Communications

Communications security for space systems has been a specialized field generally far removed from considerations of mission interoperability and cross-support in fact, these considerations often have been viewed as intrinsically opposed to security objectives. The space communications protocols defined by the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) have a twenty-five year history of successful use in over 400 missions. While the CCSDS Telemetry, Telecommand, and Advancing Orbiting Systems protocols for use at OSI Layer 2 are operationally mature, there has been no direct support within these protocols for communications security techniques. Link-layer communications security has been successfully implemented in the past using mission-unique methods, but never before with an objective of facilitating cross-support and interoperability. This paper discusses the design of a standard method for cryptographic authentication, encryption, and replay protection at the data link layer that can be integrated into existing CCSDS protocols without disruption to legacy communications services. Integrating cryptographic operations into existing data structures and processing sequences requires a careful assessment of the potential impediments within spacecraft, ground stations, and operations centers. The objective of this work is to provide a sound method for cryptographic encapsulation of frame data that also facilitates Layer 2 virtual channel switching, such that a mission may procure data transport services as needed without involving third parties in the cryptographic processing, or split independent data streams for separate cryptographic processing.

Biggerstaff, Craig↗
DOE OSTI2024

Concentrated solar thermal fuels production by electric field enhanced two step gas splitting (Final Technical Report)

Solar thermochemical CO 2 splitting (STCS) is plagued by high solar field costs due to the extraordinarily high temperatures (~1500 °C) required. In STCS, a reduction/oxidation active material, CeO 2 , is thermally reduced to CeO 2-δ generating O2 at ~1500 °C; then CeO 2-δ is re-oxidized by CO 2 to re-form CeO 2 and CO, a precursor to liquid fuels. Before this project, there were no known methods to decrease the reduction temperature while maintaining high conversion of the CO 2 to CO; thus, projected solar thermal CO costs had stagnated.

10 SYNTHETIC FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2020

High-throughput characterization of Ag–V–O nanostructured thin-film materials libraries for photoelectrochemical solar water splitting

Ag–V–O thin-film materials libraries, with both composition (Ag 22-77 V 23-78 O x ) and thickness (123–714 nm) gradients were fabricated using combinatorial reactive magnetron co-sputtering aiming on establishing relations between composition, structure, and functional properties. As-deposited libraries were annealed in air at 300 °C for 10 h. High-throughput characterization methods of composition, structure and functional properties were used to identify photoelectrochemically active regions. The phases AgV 6 O 15 , Ag 2 V 4 O 11 , AgVO 3 , and Ag 4 V 2 O 7 were observed throughout the composition gradient. The photoelectrochemical properties of Ag–V–O films are dependent on composition and morphology. An enhanced photocurrent density (~300–554 μA/cm 2 ) was obtained at 30 to 45 at.% Ag along the thickness gradient. Thin films of these compositions show a nanowire morphology, which is an important factor for the enhancement of photoelectrochemical performance. The photoelectrochemically active regions were further investigated by high-throughput synchrotron-X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy (Ag 32 V 68 O x ) which confirmed the presence of Ag 2 V 4 O 11 as the dominating phase along with the minor phases AgV 6 O 15 and AgVO 3 . This enhanced photoactive region shows bandgap values of ~2.30 eV for the direct and ~1.87 eV for the indirect bandgap energies. Finally, the porous nanostructured films improve charge transport and are hence of interest for photoelectrochemical water splitting.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
NASA NTRS2023

Phytoplankton Diversity and Chemotaxonomy in Contrasting North Pacific Ecosystems

Background. Phytoplankton is the base of majority of ocean ecosystems. It is responsible for half of the global primary production, and different phytoplankton taxa have a unique role in global biogeochemical cycles. In addition, phytoplankton abundance and diversity are highly susceptible to climate induced changes, hence monitoring of phytoplankton and its diversity is important and necessary. Methods. Water samples for phytoplankton and photosynthetic pigment analyses were collected in boreal winter 2017, along transect in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre (NPSG) and the California Current System (CCS). Phytoplankton community was analyzed using light and scanning electron microscopy and photosynthetic pigments by high-performance liquid chromatography. To describe distinct ecosystems, monthly average satellite data of MODIS Aqua Sea Surface temperature and Chlorophyll a concentration, as well as Apparent Visible Wavelength were used. Results. A total of 207 taxa have been determined, mostly comprised of coccolithophores (35.5%), diatoms (25.2%) and dinoflagellates (19.5%) while cryptophytes, phytoflagellates and silicoflagellates were included in the group ``others" (19.8%). Phytoplankton spatial distribution was distinct, indicating variable planktonic dispersal rates and specific adaptation to ecosystems. Dinoflagellates, and nano-scale coccolithophores dominated NPSG, while micro-scale diatoms, and cryptophytes prevailed in CCS. A clear split between CCS and NPSG is evident in dendogram visualising LINKTREE constrained binary divisive clustering analysis done on phytoplankton counts and pigment oncentrations. Of all pigments determined, alloxanthin, zeaxanthin, divinyl chlorophyll b and lutein have highest correlation to phytoplankton counts. Conclusion. Combining chemotaxonomy and microscopy is an optimal method to determine phytoplankton diversity on a large-scale transect. Distinct communities between the two contrasting ecosystems of North Pacific reveal phytoplankton groups specific adaptations to trophic state, and support the hypothesis of shift from microto nano-scale taxa due to sea surface temperatures rising, favoring stratification and oligotrophic conditions.

oceanography↗
DOE OSTI2018

Calculating Trajectories Associated With Solute Transport in a Heterogeneous Medium

Here, we present a trajectory-based technique for calculating solute transport in a porous medium that has several advantages over existing methods. Unlike streamlines, the extended trajectories are influenced by each of the important parameters governing transport, including molecular diffusion and transverse dispersion. The approach is complete and does not require any additional techniques, such as operator splitting or particle tracking, in order to account for the full dispersion tensor. The semianalytic expressions make it clear how the flow field, the concentration distribution, and the dispersion tensor contribute to the velocity field of an injected solute. The equations are valid for an arbitrary porous medium, including those with rapid spatial variations in properties, overcoming limitations faced by previous approaches based upon asymptotic techniques. A test on a layered model with sharp boundaries indicates that the extended trajectories are compatible with the results of a numerical simulator and differ from streamlines. We also describe a new form of the dispersion tensor that incorporates a known asymmetry. The trajectories indicate that the modifications of the dispersion tensor lead to more focused transport within regions of high conductivity. The trajectories are used to define a semianalytic relationship between solute travel times and variations in solute velocities along a path that may be used for tomographic imaging. In an application to the injection of a radioactive tracer into a Berea sandstone core, monitored using micropositron emission tomographic (micro-PET) observations, the sensitivities are used to map the spatial variations of permeability within the core.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2022

Controlled Injection of Electrons for Improved Performance of Laser-Wakefield Acceleration

Our lab performed a series of experiments on controlled injection of LWFA with two extreme laser pulses: one laser pulse was used to drive LWFA. In contrast, the other precisely controls the injection of electrons into the wakefield plasma wave. We have demonstrated an efficient reduction of electron beam emittance by optical injection and novel spatio-temporal manipulation of the electron beam by the extreme laser-plasma waves. Moreover, the optical injection process involves unprecedented new physics, which will benefit studies in astrophysics, inertial confinement fusion, laser-driven x-ray light sources, and ultrafast science. We further improved the performance of LWFA by a better understanding and control of the extreme laser-plasma wave dynamics for optical injection. Three novel mechanisms were identified in the optical injection process: (1) collision of two laser pulses, (2) collision of a laser pulse with a wakefield plasma wave, and (3) collision of two laser wakefields. All three methods improved electron-beam energy spread, emittance, stability, and reproducibility. First, we identified, compared, and independently controlled these different injection mechanisms by controlling the polarization of the injector laser pulse. Second, we manipulated the spatiotemporal splitting of LWFA electron beams to reduce their emittance. Third, we applied the same laser-plasma-wave dynamics and the same experimental setup for improved performance of ion acceleration, which has also been predicted by the recent simulations.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Increased signal-to-noise ratios within experimental field trials by regressing spatially distributed soil properties as principal components

Environmental variability poses a major challenge to any field study. Researchers attempt to mitigate this challenge through replication. Thus, the ability to detect experimental signals is determined by the degree of replication and the amount of environmental variation, noise, within the experimental system. A major source of noise in field studies comes from the natural heterogeneity of soil properties which create microtreatments throughout the field. In addition, the variation within different soil properties is often nonrandomly distributed across a field. We explore this challenge through a sorghum field trial dataset with accompanying plant, microbiome, and soil property data. Diverse sorghum genotypes and two watering regimes were applied in a split-plot design. We describe a process of identifying, estimating, and controlling for the effects of spatially distributed soil properties on plant traits and microbial communities using minimal degrees of freedom. Importantly, this process provides a method with which sources of environmental variation in field data can be identified and adjusted, improving our ability to resolve effects of interest and to quantify subtle phenotypes.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS1992

Active control of asymmetric vortical flows around cones using injection and heating

The effectiveness of certain active-control methods for asymmetric flows around circular cones is investigated by using computational solution of the unsteady, compressible full Navier-Stokes equations. Two main methods of active control which include flow injection and surface heating are used. For the flow-injection-control method, flow injection is used either in the normal direction to the surface or in the tangential direction to the surface. For the surface-heating-control method, the temperature of the cone surface is increased. The effectiveness of a hybrid method of flow control which combines normal injection with surface heating has also been studied. The Navier-Stokes equations, subjected to various surface boundary conditions, are solved by using an implicit, upwind, flux-difference splitting, finite-volume scheme for locally-conical flow solutions.

Kandil, Osama A.↗
DOE OSTI2018

Structural Health Monitoring of 3D Printed Structures

3D printed parts are used in industry for both tooling application and smaller parts in assembled structures. Articles made through polymer based additive manufacturing are anisotropic and may have defects throughout the part. For instance, the layer to layer interactions are weaker than the in-plane printing which can cause delamination of the layers. Identifying when and where the cracks form can be very difficult if the cracks are inside the structure This paper introduces an innovative patent-pending method to monitor polymer-based 3D printed structures for internal failures by printing a highly sensitive conductive material into the part itself. When a section of the conductive material inside the part is damaged or split, the resistance across the conductive pathway increases which will indicate that the article has been damaged. We present several small printed circuits and observations that show as a crack is introduced to the structure, the resistance measured increases which alerts users that a crack has formed/propagated.

Smith, Tyler↗
DOE OSTI2024

Ligand Many-Body Expansion as a General Approach for Accelerating Transition Metal Complex Discovery

Methods that accelerate the evaluation of molecular properties are essential for chemical discovery. While some degree of ligand additivity has been established for transition metal complexes, it is underutilized in asymmetric complexes, such as the square pyramidal coordination geometries highly relevant to catalysis. To develop predictive methods beyond simple additivity, we apply a many-body expansion to octahedral and square pyramidal complexes and introduce a correction based on adjacent ligands (i.e., the cis interaction model). We first test the cis interaction model on adiabatic spin-splitting energies of octahedral Fe(II) complexes, predicting DFT-calculated values of unseen binary complexes to within an average of 1.4 kcal/mol. Uncertainty analysis reveals the optimal basis, comprising the homoleptic and mer symmetric complexes. We next show that the cis model (i.e., the cis interaction model solved for the optimal basis) infers both DFT- and CCSD(T)-calculated model catalytic reaction energies to within 1 kcal/mol on average. The cis model predicts low-symmetry complexes with reaction energies outside the range of binary complex reaction energies. We observe that trans interactions are unnecessary for most monodentate systems but can be important for some combinations of ligands, such as complexes containing a mixture of bidentate and monodentate ligands. Lastly, we demonstrate that the cis model may be combined with Δ-learning to predict CCSD(T) reaction energies from exhaustively calculated DFT reaction energies and the same fraction of CCSD(T) reaction energies needed for the cis model, achieving around 30% of the error from using the CCSD(T) reaction energies in the cis model alone.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
NASA NTRS2013

ISSM: Ice Sheet System Model

In order to have the capability to use satellite data from its own missions to inform future sea-level rise projections, JPL needed a full-fledged ice-sheet/iceshelf flow model, capable of modeling the mass balance of Antarctica and Greenland into the near future. ISSM was developed with such a goal in mind, as a massively parallelized, multi-purpose finite-element framework dedicated to ice-sheet modeling. ISSM features unstructured meshes (Tria in 2D, and Penta in 3D) along with corresponding finite elements for both types of meshes. Each finite element can carry out diagnostic, prognostic, transient, thermal 3D, surface, and bed slope simulations. Anisotropic meshing enables adaptation of meshes to a certain metric, and the 2D Shelfy-Stream, 3D Blatter/Pattyn, and 3D Full-Stokes formulations capture the bulk of the ice-flow physics. These elements can be coupled together, based on the Arlequin method, so that on a large scale model such as Antarctica, each type of finite element is used in the most efficient manner. For each finite element referenced above, ISSM implements an adjoint. This adjoint can be used to carry out model inversions of unknown model parameters, typically ice rheology and basal drag at the ice/bedrock interface, using a metric such as the observed InSAR surface velocity. This data assimilation capability is crucial to allow spinning up of ice flow models using available satellite data. ISSM relies on the PETSc library for its vectors, matrices, and solvers. This allows ISSM to run efficiently on any parallel platform, whether shared or distrib- ISSM: Ice Sheet System Model NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California uted. It can run on the largest clusters, and is fully scalable. This allows ISSM to tackle models the size of continents. ISSM is embedded into MATLAB and Python, both open scientific platforms. This improves its outreach within the science community. It is entirely written in C/C++, which gives it flexibility in its design, and the power/speed that C/C++ allows. ISSM is svn (subversion) hosted, on a JPL repository, to facilitate its development and maintenance. ISSM can also model propagation of rifts using contact mechanics and mesh splitting, and can interface to the Dakota software. To carry out sensitivity analysis, mesh partitioning algorithms are available, based on the Scotch, Chaco, and Metis partitioners that ensure equal area mesh partitions can be done, which are then usable for sampling and local reliability methods.

Larour, Eric↗
DOE OSTI2018

Adaptive Sampling of Large Deviations

We introduce and test an algorithm that adaptively estimates large deviation functions characterizing the fluctuations of additive functionals of Markov processes in the long-time limit. These functions play an important role for predicting the probability and pathways of rare events in stochastic processes, as well as for understanding the physics of nonequilibrium systems driven in steady states by external forces and reservoirs. The algorithm uses methods from risk-sensitive and feedback control to estimate from a single trajectory a new process, called the driven process, known to be efficient for importance sampling. Its advantages compared to other simulation techniques, such as splitting or cloning, are discussed and illustrated with simple equilibrium and nonequilibrium diffusion models.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2024

STCH quarterly report_LLNL input

In this quarter, to understand the co-limitation imposed by surface reaction kinetics at moderate-to-low water splitting temperatures, we compute the reaction energy and barrier for water splitting surface reaction on SrMn 0.5 Ti 0.5 O 3-δ (SMT55). First, using the low-energy (100), (110), and (111) surfaces, we attempted to identify several symmetrically distinct sites for oxygen vacancy based on statistical methods.

08 HYDROGEN↗
NASA NTRS1997

RNS Applications for Interacting Sub- and Supersonic Flows

A solution based grid adaptation method that combines elements of the multigrid method for solution acceleration and the domain decomposition philosophy for grid optimization is described. Unlike other solution based adaptive gridding schemes, wherein the overhead of recomputing the grid and re-evaluating the solution on the adapted grid leads to higher computational costs compared to a non-adapted calculation, the present methodology reduces the computational time required to obtain the solution. The computational effort involved in the present calculation is significantly lower than a non-adapted calculation that utilizes the multigrid method purely as a convergence acceleration tool. In addition to convergence acceleration, the multigrid framework provides a mechanism of information transfer from regions wherein grid refinement is specified to unrefined coarse grid regions. The basis for domain decomposition in the current procedure is the variation in grid refinement requirements for each coordinate direction in different portions of the flow field. The method is demonstrated herein on an efficient set of governing equations termed the reduced Navier Stokes equations, applied in conjunction with a set of physical boundary conditions. The governing equations are discretized through a pressure based flux splitting procedure that is uniformly applicable from incompressible to supersonic Mach numbers.

Rubin, Stanley G.↗